Might as well get this thread fired up for tonight's game. The Wolves are a pretty average Division II squad, and all that I know comes from watching them pound my Division III Willamette Bearcats last year. My prediction: it's pretty close early, but once the offense gets rolling and the defense clamps down, Pilots run away with it. 94-57.

Ugh. What a forgettable outcome. I wouldn't take this too seriously, though, as it is only an exhibition. Hopefully Rev and the staff were able to gage the strengths and weaknesses of the team reasonably well and will be able to work out the bugs before any real games.

Dear oh dear oh dear... that was NOT encouraging. I'm not going to get too stressed about it - obviously we were using lots of different line-ups and over half the team was playing its first collegiate game - but still... you've got to be able to put a team like that away.

Anyway, clearly the team has a long way to go... but I did think that Raivio looked pretty solid and that Knutson had a pretty good game. Sikma played OK too... definitely can see some potential there. But really no one else stepped up - Smeulders looked bad and picked up way too many quick fouls. Sherrard decided to start trying only in the last two minutes. Ito's shot was way off... though maybe that's excusable due to the fact that he missed lots of practice and his family situation. Thompson was firing up bricks and Carter looked awful. Niedermeyer played well in the first half but contributes hustle more than scoring. Stohl didn't do anything, though in fairness he didn't really have a chance to do anything. Hannibal made a few buckets and did OK I suppose.

But hey - got to give credit to Western Oregon. They hung in there and made the plays and shots when they needed to.

Not much farther down than losing to a team that's a full division lower than you are. Although come to think of it, losing to Cascade (which is NAIA) would definitely be worse. And that's a regular season game, too.

Yea, that game was hard to watch. When the team came out I immediately noticed how skinny our team is (with the possible exception of Hannidal). Even before the tip Western Oregon made us look small (except that little number 12), probably not a good sign when we go up against the Oregon and higher end WCC teams. What I think really showed tonight was that there are a lot of freshmen on this team and those freshmen looked like freshmen and thats not good. Ito did have some pretty impressive slashing cuts but his size minimized there effectiveness and he looked just a little off. Watson only really decided to show up in the last couple minutes. Hannibal sort of reminded me of Marcus Lewis. He had a couple nice moves and then had trouble finishing but he's young and thats pretty understandable. On the flip side, I really liked watching Ravio, which is pretty crazy when you take into account the hate I had for his older brother. I think he could turn into something special. Also, I don't know if anybody noticed a couple noteworthy spectators. Coop came in pretty early on in the game. And on the top row behind the hoop sat a large portion of the PSU basketball team, Jones, Dominguez and Tiefenthaler (sp?). If we lose to PSU I might need some heavy medicating.

Wow, I did not expect this when I woke up this morning...That is a very bad way to start the year out...

Just looking at the box score, it appears that Raivio is our biggest contributor: 14 points, 4-7 from the field, 3 assists, 2 steals in 23 minutes. I was shocked that Smeulders played only 4 minutes, that Thompson started, Watson only took 5 shots, and that Sikma took 11 shots.

It looks like (again, only from the stat line) Knutson and SIkma were able to do alright fown low. The eached grabbed a fair number of boards.

The scariest thing to me is what someone mentioned above: we just look way smaller than the other teams. Oh crap. This is not good.

The pilots sure did look nervous outthere. I also notice that our players were looking a lot to the bench for direction. I know there timing and choice of shot was totally off. Hopefullly on the next exhibition game on Saturday will be a diffirent outcome.

Smeulders, to me, was the biggest disappointment in the game. I'm not sure why he didn't start, but picking up three fouls in four minutes is just ridiculous. Still, I was surprised to not see him out on the floor at the end of the game... I'm wondering if maybe he is hurt a little bit or something? He looked OK, but you never know... or maybe he was just in the dog house after all the fouls?

Anyway... the big thing I noticed was that on offense we didn't seem to be really running the plays. At the scrimmage, I was encouraged because they were doing a good job of working the ball from the outside to the inside to either a quality shot or back outside for an open look. Last night... seemed like they were dribbling around for a while and then maybe penetrating and kicking out or just kind of forcing a shot because, well, what else are you going to do with it? I can definitely see lots of areas for improvement on the offensive end.

As for effort... how many times have we seen this happen? Seems like every time we play a team like this (Concordia, Seattle U, Lews & Clark, etc.) we never really play very enthusiastically. Usually we end up pulling away at the end based on talent, but remember... Pooh and Donald's senior year we lost to Seattle during the regular season. I can't explain why, but struggling to teams like this does have a precedent.

Anyway, I'm definitely interested to see how they come out on Saturday against Concordia. If they come out lackadaisacal, I'll be very disappointed. If they come out looking like they've got something to prove, I'll know we've got guys with the right kind of attitude to improve through adversity, since that's what we're going to have to do a lot of this year.

Here's my positive thought... during halftime a friend of mine came up and we were talking about how the first half didn't look so great, and he joked, "Well, what do you expect when the average age of our guys out on the floor is 17."

Yes, this sucks. Yes, I wanted to jab a fork in my eye after we lost our last chance to tie the game on a bad pass. Yes, I'm hating life this morning.

But we can't get too carried away. It's one game, the team is super young, there was tons of experimentation with line-ups and match-ups, it was Halloween (when weird things always happen)... and it's only pre-season. Honestly, we can pretty much just pretend that this didn't happen, which is what I think my chosen defense mechanism is going to be... just like that time a few Halloweens ago when I met that girl dressed like a piece of bread at a party...